This 47-minute podcast is a discussion with Alexander Kirk, creator of the recently released Blummy (which I mentioned last week) and also Bandnews.

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A few things we discussed:

  • The design behind Blummy. (Interestingly, I was incorrect to guess it uses XHR - basically, the Blummy is like a Greasemonkey script - it uses DOM manipulation to alter the page you’re on, building up the container of all the Blummlets, and interacts with other sites using standard HTTP requests.)
  • Plans for Blummy, its use of Lazy Registration, security issues.
  • Developing for cross-browser compatibility.
  • Passing data from another domain with JSON.
  • The design behind Bandnews. Most band websites don’t bother with RSS, so Bandnews creates its own RSS feed, which is what the browser script reads.
  • Why some Ajax apps are slow and what can be done about it.
  • Libraries mentioned: dojotoolkit, prototype.